Elsevier

Annals of Medicine and Surgery

Volume 59, November 2020, Pages 96-100
Annals of Medicine and Surgery

Cross-sectional Study
The Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on pediatric surgery practice: A cross-sectional study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2020.09.020Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • Since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020, routine clinical practices were affected, including pediatric surgery services.

  • The pediatric surgery practices have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including the elective and outpatients' services.

  • This setback needs a comprehensive strategy to avoid morbidity from the neglected elective surgeries during the pandemic, including the proper comparison between the real risk of COVID-19 cross-infection and the benefits of elective procedures.

Abstract

Background

Since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020, routine clinical practices were affected, including pediatric surgery services. We aimed to compare pediatric surgery practices, including the number and types of surgery, either elective or emergency surgeries and outpatient services, before the outbreak and during the COVID-19 pandemic in our institution.

Material and methods

We retrospectively compared pediatric surgery practices, including elective and emergency surgeries, and outpatient services between the previous one-year period (March 2019–February 2020), the last three months of that period (December 2019–February 2020) before the outbreak, and the three months (March–May 2020) during the COVID-19 pandemic in our hospital.

Results

The frequency of elective surgeries during the pandemic was lower than during the last three months before the outbreak: 61 vs. 18 (~3-fold), 19 vs. 13 (~1.5-fold), 19 vs. 5 (~4-fold), and 30 vs. 15 (~2-fold) for digestive, neonate, urology and oncology cases, respectively. No laparoscopic procedures were performed during the pandemic compared with the one-year period before the outbreak (0 vs. 16 cases). The frequency of all emergency pediatric procedures before and during the COVID-19 pandemic was similar (29 vs. 20 cases, respectively). Moreover, a declining trend was also clearly apparent in the outpatient services during the pandemic compared with before the outbreak, both in the new and the established patients.

Conclusions

The pediatric surgery practices in our institution have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including elective and outpatient services. This setback needs a comprehensive strategy to avoid morbidity from the neglected elective surgeries during the pandemic, including the proper comparison between the real risk of COVID-19 cross-infection and the benefits of elective procedures.

Keywords

COVID-19 pandemic
Elective and emergency surgeries
Indonesia
Outbreak
Outpatient services
Pediatric surgery practices

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